20 May 2024, Lilongwe, Malawi — Speaking to delegates and international leaders at the 9th African Population Conference, Lydia Zigomo, the UNFPA Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, emphasized the critical need to focus on human capital to guide Africa towards sustainable development amid global uncertainties.
The conference, themed “Road to 2030: Leveraging Africa’s Human Capital to Achieve Transformation in a World of Uncertainty,” marks a key moment to review progress since the landmark International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo 30 years ago.
Ms. Zigomo celebrated notable achievements since the Cairo declaration, such as gender parity in primary school enrolment and improvements in maternal health, while also addressing ongoing challenges like high teenage pregnancy rates and persistent gender-based violence.
She highlighted Malawi’s leadership in hosting the conference and its dedication, demonstrated during the recent 57th Session of the Commission on Population and Development (CPD). Moreover, she underscored the importance of the Political Declaration adopted at the CPD, reaffirming the commitment to the ICPD agenda and its ongoing relevance beyond 2030.
Ms. Zigomo stressed the interconnectedness of the ICPD and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), calling for greater political will and financial commitments to complete the ICPD agenda. “Accelerating our efforts with high-quality, timely, and disaggregated data is crucial to inform policies and effectively monitor progress,” she stated.
Looking forward, she stressed the importance of investing in youth, particularly girls, to harness the demographic dividend and achieve Africa’s Agenda 2063. “Educating and empowering Africa’s youth is essential for the continent's future,” she added.
As the conference progresses, discussions will focus on how demographic factors such as urbanization, climate change, and digitalization impact development, emphasizing rights-based approaches to support vulnerable populations.
Ms. Zigomo concluded with a call to action for robust, evidence-based policies and investments in population programs, vital for shaping the future of Africa’s development landscape.
Harnessing Africa’s youth dividend
In his opening remarks, Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera noted that the assembly is timely, marking the 30th anniversary of the Program of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).
This is a Program of Action that demands we grapple with the multi-faceted implications of Africa being the second most populous continent, projected to be home to a quarter of the world’s population by 2050, most of whom will continue to be young people under the age of 25,” he said.
He also called on the world to harness Africa’s youth dividend. “Other continents are struggling to sustain their labour market demands because they do not have enough young people to work in critical industries, including agriculture and food security. Africa is perfectly poised to be a solution to this challenge if only we can remove our afro-pessimistic lenses and see that the youthful and enterprising population of Africa is a resource we must harness and equip to solve the sustainability problems that aging populations of other nations are grappling with,” he said.
President Chakwera added that Africa needs platforms for synergy, where the population advantage of Africa is married to the human capital disadvantages elsewhere to create a better world. In his speech, he emphasized platforms for inclusivity, where those in power open doors for the youthful and enterprising citizens to be entrusted with power to make a meaningful contribution to governance and development. The Malawi leader emphasized that Africa must celebrate and leverage her demographic dividend by nurturing, empowering, and deploying her people, not lamenting it.
The President further added, “We must put our populations to work and animate them to the fact that we are in a long season of sacrificial nation-building, a lean season of disciplined sowing, not a short-sighted and election-obsessed season of harvesting, plundering, and eating like there is no tomorrow. We must take bold action to invest in our human capital, including ambitious targets with respect to early childhood development, the education of girls, and the end of child marriage by 2030.”
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For further information, contact:
Joseph Scott, Communications Analyst, email: jscott@unfpa.org phone: +265999134949
About UNFPA:
UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, aims to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe, and every young person's potential is fulfilled.
